A new conceptual framework to improve the application of occupational health and safety management systems

The benefits of using occupational health and safety management systems (OHS MS) have been typically restricted to large scale, multi-site organisations, often from the manufacturing sector. Transferring these benefits to smaller businesses has been fraught with difficulty, with the mechanics and bureaucracy of the system itself sometimes becoming overwhelming. A conceptual framework to ensure that an OHS MS has been carefully constructed and customised to the individual organisation is presented here to bring together the merits of the three main control strategies that have emerged for dealing with workplace hazards namely: safe place, safe person and safe systems. The overarching intention is to simplify the implementation process and make the benefits of OHS MS more obvious. This paper also argues that unless the hazard profile of the organisation has been accurately determined and appropriately addressed; and the type of business operation has been understood and analysed to appreciate which factors have the greatest impact on health and safety; compliance auditing will have little impact on the organisation’s overall safety performance.